[Interest] Zooming with QGraphicsView/QGraphicsItem

Sat Aug 10 16:48:15 CEST 2019

> On Aug 10, 2019, at 12:19 AM, Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 10 Aug 2019 at 05:29, Israel Brewster <ijbrewster at alaska.edu <mailto:ijbrewster at alaska.edu>> wrote:
>> 
>> So using QGIS to convert my .shp files to .svg, and then loading the result in a QGraphicsSVGItem works like a charm - thanks! The only drawback I’m seeing is zooming performance. It *looks* good, but is a tad sluggish. When using QGIS, I noticed that it was compiled against Qt as well, but when they zoom, the actual image redraw is delayed until the zoom is complete. That is, when zooming in, things get pixelated until you pause, whereupon they are re-drawn correctly.  The end result is that things look worse when zooming, but zoom performance is lag-free. Is this behavior easily obtainable, such as through a setting on the QGraphicsSVGItem or perhaps the QGraphicsView, or is QGIS doing something completely different, such that I would have to do a lot of re-implementation to accomplish said effect?
> 
> What QGIS is actually doing here is rendering the vector to a QImage
> in a background thread, and then when this rendering is complete the
> QImage is cached and used painted inside an item in the scene. Zooming
> triggers an update of the cached QImage from the vector content in the
> background, so you see the pixelated version temporarily until the new
> image is ready. This means the main GUI thread/scene is always
> responsive and isn't impacted by complex vector content.
> Unfortunately, it's not anything which can be achieved easily through
> the existing Qt API -- you'll need to setup the background thread and
> cached image updates yourself.
> 
> The relevant code parts get a little tricky, because they rely on
> QGIS' map renderer, but look around:
> https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/master/src/gui/qgsmapcanvas.cpp#L518 <https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/master/src/gui/qgsmapcanvas.cpp#L518>
> https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/master/src/gui/qgsmapcanvas.cpp#L595 <https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/master/src/gui/qgsmapcanvas.cpp#L595>
> https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/master/src/gui/qgsmapcanvasmap.cpp#L33 <https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/master/src/gui/qgsmapcanvasmap.cpp#L33>
> https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/master/src/gui/qgsmapcanvasmap.cpp#L61 <https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/master/src/gui/qgsmapcanvasmap.cpp#L61>
> 
>> When zooming out, areas that were outside the window remain empty until you pause, at which point they are drawn.
> 
> In recent versions we do things a little different, and:
> 1. render the visible portion of the vector to the cached image and
> show on the item as quickly as possible
> 2. trigger a separate background job when this is done, to render
> portions of the vector just outside the visible extent
> 
> Again, this keeps the main view update as fast as possible, while
> giving nicer results when zooming out (less chance of missing image
> portions which were originally out of view).
> 
> Hope this helps!
> 
> Nyall

Gotcha. That makes sense. I suspect this approach will be more work than it’s worth for my application - the performance is sluggish, but useable - but I’ll take a look. Thanks for the pointers!

---
Israel Brewster
Software Engineer
Alaska Volcano Observatory 
Geophysical Institute - UAF 
2156 Koyukuk Drive 
Fairbanks AK 99775-7320
Work: 907-474-5172
cell:  907-328-9145

> 
> 
>> 
>> ---
>> Israel Brewster
>> Software Engineer
>> Alaska Volcano Observatory
>> Geophysical Institute - UAF
>> 2156 Koyukuk Drive
>> Fairbanks AK 99775-7320
>> Work: 907-474-5172
>> cell:  907-328-9145
>> 
>> On Aug 8, 2019, at 8:19 AM, Francis Herne <mail at flherne.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> You should definitely look at QGIS:
>> https://qgis.org/en/site/index.html
>> 
>> It's open-source and has an excellent map-rendering implementation including shapefile support.
>> 
>> -Francis H
>> 
>> ________________________________
>> From: Israel Brewster <ijbrewster at alaska.edu>
>> Sent: 8 August 2019 16:55:49 BST
>> To: Brad Pepers <bpepers at me.com>
>> Cc: Interest <interest at qt-project.org>
>> Subject: Re: [Interest] Zooming with QGraphicsView/QGraphicsItem
>> 
>> I do have .shp files for the coastlines - perhaps I could convert those to something I could use? If I can get vector data, how would I go about utilizing it?
>> 
>> I played around a bit with loading different image files, but so far the performance has been unacceptable - the entire app locks up for several seconds when displaying the higher resolution images. I think Vector would be a better way to go, if I can figure out how. Thanks!
>> ---
>> Israel Brewster
>> Software Engineer
>> Alaska Volcano Observatory
>> Geophysical Institute - UAF
>> 2156 Koyukuk Drive
>> Fairbanks AK 99775-7320
>> Work: 907-474-5172
>> cell:  907-328-9145
>> 
>> On Aug 7, 2019, at 10:12 PM, Brad Pepers <bpepers at me.com> wrote:
>> 
>> In the end the answer is to get the coast as vector data instead of a raster. The raster is going to be at a fixed map scale and any scale above or below is going to extrapolate or interpolate the results eventually ending in poor results because there just isn’t the information needed or too much information is being lost. Having different resolutions should help and you can keep multiple levels and switch between them at appropriate times (LOD). Those are your best bets if you can’t get the actual vector data!
>> 
>> --
>> Brad
>> 
>> 
>> On Aug 7, 2019, at 12:01 PM, Israel Brewster <ijbrewster at alaska.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> I have a QGraphicsScene/QGraphicsView that I am using to display a map (and some data). The map is in the mercator projection, with the x and y coordinates of the scene corresponding to map coordinates, so the background images are rather large. Images are loaded into a QGraphicsObject which is then added to the scene. The object types are defined by a third-party library, so I don’t have the option of using different objects, such as QGraphicsPixmapObject or something.
>> 
>> This works fine when I’m zoomed in to the map. Coastlines are nice and sharp, with no issues:
>> <Screen Shot 2019-08-07 at 9.50.10 AM.png>
>> 
>> However, when I zoom out, the coastline becomes quite pixelated, and difficult to see in places:
>> <Screen Shot 2019-08-07 at 9.50.28 AM.png>
>> 
>> How can I fix this? My first thought was to change the size of the background image so it could scale better, but that didn’t seem to help. In retrospect, this makes sense: at the end of the day, the background image has to be the correct size for the mercator projection, so while I can certainly change the pixel density, the overall size, and thus how much scaling is needed to display a given area, is fixed.
>> 
>> ---
>> Israel Brewster
>> Software Engineer
>> Alaska Volcano Observatory
>> Geophysical Institute - UAF
>> 2156 Koyukuk Drive
>> Fairbanks AK 99775-7320
>> Work: 907-474-5172
>> cell:  907-328-9145
>> 
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